Among the technologies that allow computers and/or other network devices to form a local area network (LAN), Ethernet has become the dominant networking technology and is standardized in the IEEE 802.3 family of standards. The Ethernet standard has evolved over time so that different variants of the Ethernet protocol now exist to support higher bandwidth, improved media access controls, different physical media channels, and/or other functionalities. For example, IEEE 802.3 now has variants covering speeds (or transmission rates) ranging from 10 Mbit/s, 100 Mbit/s, 1 Gbit/s, to 10 Gbit/s and even higher, and has variants that govern physical channels such as coaxial cables, fiber-optics, and unshielded/shielded twisted-pair cables.
The IEEE 802.3 family of standards also includes the IEEE 802.3az standard, which describes Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE), a standard designed to reduce power consumption in Ethernet devices. Because many Ethernet devices employ transceivers that may operate at very high speeds (e.g., 1 Gbit/s or 10 Gbit/s), such devices may consume a significant amount of power when transmitting and receiving data. To reduce power consumption, EEE-compliant devices may use a low power idle (LPI) signal to place its transceiver (or the transmit portions of the transceiver) into a low power mode when there is little or no data being transmitted over an associated data link. The transceiver remains in the low power mode for a duration of time commonly referred to as its “quiet period.” Once the quiet period ends, the transceiver may wake up and perform a refresh operation (e.g., to ready itself for transmit operations).
When there is data to be transmitted, the low power mode may be terminated by de-asserting the LPI signal, which in turn wakes up the transceiver (or the transmit portions of the transceiver). However, periodically powering-on and powering-off the transceiver (or the transmit portions of the transceiver) may induce significant current transients (e.g., significant amounts of current change in an instantaneous or short duration of time) within the transceiver, which in turn may cause improper operation and/or damage to various circuit components of the transceiver. This problem may be exacerbated for multi-port Ethernet devices, for example, because of the greater number of transceiver components that may be simultaneously powered on and off in response to the LPI signal (e.g., as compared with single-port Ethernet devices).